Chapter 27 #2
That, at least, was familiar. He had long ago learned how to go on with what needed doing despite whatever private discomfort accompanied it.
If the matter could not be settled cleanly, then he would settle it himself.
He would ride with Archer. He would deal with Noor.
He would take the burden where it belonged and keep Iona from it, whether she thanked him later or hated him for it now.
The look on her face stayed with him. Not anger.
He could have borne anger more easily. Not defiance either, though he knew well enough how to answer that.
It had been the quietness of her. The hurt.
The way she had looked at him as though he had suddenly become a stranger wearing her husband’s shape.
He closed his eyes briefly and swore under his breath. He had spoken badly. Not falsely, perhaps, but badly. And worse than badly, he had spoken in the exact manner that ought never be used with her. Command where care should have sufficed. Authority where trust had been required.
By nightfall, the restlessness in him had sharpened past endurance.
He made his way to her chamber without announcing himself, knowing before he reached it that she would still be awake. He did not know how he knew that. Only that he did. There was a lamp still burning beneath the door, and quiet on the other side that did not feel like sleep.
When he entered, he found her as he had expected.
Propped against the pillows, the blanket drawn up neatly, her hair loose over one shoulder.
The book on her lap had not been turned for some time.
She looked up at once when he stepped inside, but whatever she had been thinking vanished behind a stillness that set him on edge immediately.
“Iona?” he said softly.
She did not answer.
He crossed the room, slower than he might have otherwise, giving her space to turn him away if she meant to. She did not. Nor did she reach for him. That, more than the silence, made something tighten in his stomach.
Frederick sat on the edge of the bed and gathered her toward him anyway, carefully at first, one arm around her shoulders, the other brushing a loose strand of hair back from her cheek. “I came to speak with ye.”
Her body came with the motion easily enough, but there was no answering softness to it. No leaning into him. No quiet shift that told him she had wanted him near.
He pressed a kiss to her temple, then to her brow. Another to her cheek. The gesture should have felt natural. Familiar now. Instead it felt strangely one-sided, as though he were trying to coax warmth from cold linen.
“I shouldnae have raised me voice,” he said against her skin. “And I shouldnae have spoken to ye that way.”
Still she said nothing.
He kissed the other side of her face, more slowly this time, searching for some sign of her. “I am sorry, mo chridhe.”
At that, she let out the smallest breath. Not quite a sigh. Not quite resignation. Something in between.
Frederick drew back slightly to look at her. “Are ye still angry with me?”
“Nay.” But the answer came too quickly, too flatly.
He studied her face. “That doesnae sound like nay.”
“It is nae,” she said again, her voice calm in a way that did not reassure him in the least.
He frowned. “Then what is it?”
Her eyes met his then, and what he found in them unsettled him more than anger would have.
“I am trying,” she said quietly, “to be the meek, submissive wife ye seemed to want this morning.”
For a moment, he simply stared at her.
Then his stomach dropped.
He sat back a fraction as though the words had struck him physically. “That isnae what I wanted.”
Her mouth curved in something that was not a smile. “Is isnae?”
“Nay.” The answer came at once, harsher with urgency than he intended. “By God, Iona, nay.”
She lowered her gaze then, not in obedience, but in that same terrible quietness that had followed him all day.
Frederick pushed a hand back through his hair and let out a rough breath. “Ye think I want ye cowed into agreement. Is that what ye think of me now?”
“I think ye want me safe,” she said. “And I think ye mean to decide for me what that looks like.”
“That is not the same thing.”
“It feels like it.”
He rose from the bed and took a step away, then turned back at once, too restless to stand still and too agitated to pace without looking like a fool.
“I spoke badly. I know that. But I am trying to keep ye from walking directly into the hands of a woman who has already done ye more harm than I can bear to think on.”
“And I am trying to make ye understand that she will nae stop while I hide behind other people.”
He closed his eyes for the space of a breath and opened them again. “I do understand it.”
“Then why will ye nae hear me?”
He looked at her and found no room left in himself for patient explanations. Not because he did not owe them to her, but because every word seemed only to carry them farther from one another rather than closer.
“Fine,” he said at last, exasperation roughening the edges of the word. “Come tomorrow for all I care.”
The moment it left him, he knew it for a mistake.
Iona’s lashes lowered. Her hands folded more neatly over the blanket in her lap.
“Whatever me husband requires of me,” she whispered.
It was the tone more than the words that undid what remained of his control. Frederick stared at her for a long beat, disbelief and frustration colliding so sharply that he could scarcely separate one from the other.
“This is impossible,” he said.
She did not answer.
He took one step toward the bed, then stopped himself. Whatever he might say next would not mend anything tonight. Not in this temper. Not with her looking at him as though she had already withdrawn to some place inside herself he could not reach.
“Ye’re impossible,” he growled, though there was more despair than anger in it by the end.
Then, because remaining would only make him say something worse, he turned and left the room.
The corridor outside felt colder than it should have.